


4. some ancient call

by winterfire22



Series: the losers kill It at age 13 and they all go to college together and everything is better [5]
Category: IT (Movies - Muschietti)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Angst and Hurt/Comfort, College AU, College era, Gay Richie Tozier, Gen, Kinda, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, Richie Tozier & Stanley Uris Are Best Friends, also? shoutout to stephen king for having stan and patty come up with baby names, anyway, belongs to my college verse in which the losers killed pennywise for good in ch. 1, communicate w your significant other it's good, established benverly, established reddie, hate naming fictional characters' kids, rlly appriciate that, third person richie pov but it's about stan
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-09-23
Updated: 2019-09-23
Packaged: 2020-10-27 01:30:53
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,284
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20752106
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/winterfire22/pseuds/winterfire22
Summary: nine years ago, in 1989, the losers' club successfully defeated It for good.but stan isn't so sure they really did, and he hasn't been sleeping.





	4. some ancient call

_some ancient call_  
_that i've answered before_  
_it lives in my walls_  
_and it's under the floor_

+

The steady droning of 2 a.m. Saturday Night Live reruns on low volume is broken by four quick raps on the door. Richie blinks a few times-- he'd been zoning out pretty good, maybe even nearly falling asleep on one of the two thrift store couches he and Bev had bought for twenty bucks when they moved into this apartment three years ago. The knocks take him off guard-- it’s not like he’s expecting a visitor. 

(okay but it’s 2 in the morning on a monday, i’m the only one who’s ever awake at 2 in the morning on a monday. besides, eddie always calls first even though i always say he doesn't need to, bev would have told me if ben was going to show up and besides she’s asleep, bill is either writing or sleeping and mike is definitely sleeping, stan is definitely snuggled up in his neatly-made bed with his perfect wife and their perfect baby)

It's either a friend with an emergency or a stranger with a gun, Richie figures, so he pads over to the door as quietly as possible and takes a peek out the peephole.

Stan.

(not that it’s a very long drive, i mean it’s only what maybe like ten minutes maximum, but why did he come all the way from his house in eddington to see me in the middle of the night, what the fuck is)

Frowning, he unlocks and opens the door. Before he can say “are you okay” or “come on in” or even “hi”, Stan's mouth is going.

“Sorry to just show up like this in the middle of the night but I can't talk to Patty about this, I just can't.” The words are falling out urgently. He’s dressed in his usual type of casual clothes-- jeans, a tee shirt, and a jacket-- but he doesn’t look like himself, and with the way he’s rambling, he definitely doesn’t sound like himself either.

(by the look of his eyeballs he's either been crying or smoking weed and knowing stan he definitely hasn't been smoking weed)

Richie nudges his glasses into place. “Don’t worry about it, I was just watching TV. Come on in-- sit down,” he prompts. “You can talk to me about anything.” (you can probably talk to patty about anything too because she’s like the nicest person in the world but like whatever i guess)

Stan comes in, but he doesn't sit down. He doesn’t say anything either.

Richie shuts the door and re-locks it. “Do you want a drink?” He suggests. “Water? Beer? Something stronger?” He shuffles between his feet for a second, suddenly feeling a little fidgety as his mind pulls itself through possible ideas about why Stan is being so weird. “You look like shit.”

Stan shakes his head, his messy caramel curls flopping around. “Alcohol will just make it worse. I just-- I don't know.”

“Sit down,” Richie says again. He's always hesitant to touch his friends other than Bev and Eddie, both of whom he’s always been touchy with-- but he puts a hand on Stan's shoulder for just a second to guide him to the couch. He turns the TV off and sits next to him.

“Is Beverly sleeping?” Stan asks, rubbing at his face.

“Yeah. But she's a heavy sleeper so as long as we talk quiet it's fine.” He waits a second, lowkey staring at his friend, waiting to see if he’s going to say anything. He doesn’t. “...What’s going on with you, man?”

Stan shakes his head again and covers his face, hunching over.

(what the fuck, i hate this i absolutely hate it, why wouldn't he be able to talk to patty about this, they're sickeningly in love he probably tells her every single thought he has all the time, i really hate this but like i’m gonna force myself not to talk until he does or he won’t ever answer me, ahhhhh i wanna tell him it’ll be okay or something but i can’t talk or he won’t)

“I haven't slept in weeks,” Stan finally says.

Richie blinks. “Because of Andy?”

“No. He sleeps through the night now. He has for a while. He's a really good little sleeper.”

(okay i get it you're obsessed with your baby but what's WRONG, richie thinks, feeling his pulse in his forehead. for a second richie worries it’s something wrong with andy but it must not be or stan already would have told him ‘cause he just asked about andy and stan responded like everything was fine right? ugh, he thinks, i hate this i hate this)

“Stan, come on, what happened? You’re kinda freaking me out here,” Richie says, laughing uncomfortably.

“It's…” Stan shakes his head again, scrubbing at his face. “I don't know why but it's just gotten extra bad. The nightmares and stuff. I can't even fall asleep because I'm thinking about it, and if I do manage to fall asleep, I’m waking up in a cold sweat all frantic within an hour.”

“Thinking about what, Stanley?”

Movements jerky and uneven, Stan turns to look at Richie. His eyes are full of tears. Richie fights the urge to hug him.

“It,” he repeats. The tears spill out of his frightened brown eyes. “It.”

“Oh, shit, like, It It?” (suddenly richie feels sick; he swallows hard-- not like he doesn’t think about It himself from time to time but not bad enough to make him cry or anything, and it hadn’t really ever crossed his mind that his friends would--)

“Yes,” Stan says miserably. He rubs at his eyes again. 

“You have nightmares about It?” Richie asks dumbly.

“Don't you?”

“...No,” Richie admits, almost wishing he did just for the sake of Stan not being alone.

“Ever?”

“Once or twice right after that summer, maybe.”

“Fuck,” Stan groans, a rare curse from the most Straight-Laced Accounting Student and Dedicated Young Father in the world. “I thought… I figured we all had nightmares and we just didn't talk about it because it's… it's too… upsetting.”

“Maybe the others do,” Richie suggests uselessly.

“You sleep in the same bed as Eddie often enough. Does he?”

Richie grits his teeth for a moment, dreading the answer, not wanting to make Stan feel any more alone than he already seems to. “No,” he admits.

“Does Bev?”

“Not that I know of.”

“You'd know,” Stan says quietly, his shoulders shaking a little, his hands still shoved against his face, the tips of his fingers digging into his forehead, the heels of his palms against his chin.

“You wake up screaming and stuff?” Richie asks quietly.

“I sleep talk. Loudly, sometimes. I didn't realize I did it until Patty told me,” he admits, almost whispering. “I even woke Andy up a couple times before he started sleeping in his own room. But it's not just dreams. It's-- thoughts, I guess, while I'm awake. Sometimes I can't focus on school or my internship job or even talking to people.”

“Has Patty said anything?” (what do i do about this, how do i fix it, there has to be something)

Stan nods a few times, embarrassment or shame or something like it passing over him. “I just told her it was stress over an upcoming test.”

Richie nods, at a rare loss for words. He glances down the hall toward Beverly’s closed door. He hadn’t noticed that the cat was hanging around, but there he is, curled into a little grey fluff ball in his preferred sleeping spot outside her door. (he’s like her protector or something, richie muses silently; gotta get stan one of those)

“I should go home,” Stan says quietly, taking his face out of his hands and leaning back against the couch. “I don’t want Patty to wake up and see I’m gone and worry.”

“I mean, it sounds like there’s something worth worrying about, Stan,” Richie points out.

“She has enough to deal with. I don’t want to let her know I’m slipping. And she’d tell her mom-- she tells her mom everything, and then her mom would tell her dad, and he already hates me.”

“Why the fuck would he hate you?” Richie asks, allowing his curiosity to nudge him off topic.

“His daughter got married at twenty and had a baby at twenty-one and he pays our rent. Of course he’s going to hate me.” Stan draws a shaky breath. 

“But you love her and she wanted to do that stuff too,” Richie says. “That’s stupid. Why would he hate you if you love her? And who the fuck could actually be mad about a baby? I mean, it’s too late, he’s here. It’s not Andy’s fault and anyway, he’s cute as fuck.”

“I get the impression he’d hate me even if we’d waited. Maybe just not as bad. I don’t know. I don’t care.” He stands up and straightens the legs of his pants primly. “Sorry for barging in here in the middle of the night.”

“No, don’t even-- I’m always awake in the middle of the night, you can always come over here,” Richie says. “Are you sure you should drive, man? You can stay here.”

“Patty has a class at 7:30. I have to take care of Andy in the morning. Besides, I don’t want her to know I left in the first place-- I need to go home.” He’s already halfway to the door.

“Stan…” Richie trails off, unsure of what it was he even meant to say. 

Stan pauses and wipes at his face again. (at least he isn’t crying or shaking anymore i guess, richie thinks glumly) “It’s fine, Rich. I’ll be fine. I just needed to vent a little, I guess. I’m fine.” He flips the deadbolt and opens the door and disappears behind it.

Richie flops back on the couch, sighing, rubbing at his eyes underneath his glasses.

(i shouldn’t have let him go.)

+

Richie doesn’t mention the late night visit to Beverly. She doesn’t ask about it the next day, either, so she must have slept through it. He goes to his afternoon shift at Blockbuster Video and goes on with his life and he tries not to worry too much about Stan.

But not even a full week later, this time around midnight, another four frantic knocks hit his door.

This time, he figures he knows who it is without looking. He turns the TV off and heads to answer it.

Stan didn’t bother getting dressed before showing up tonight-- he’s wearing plaid pajama pants and an old Derry High School tee shirt. The cracked, faded orange tiger screen-printed onto it roars silently. Richie accidentally makes eye contact with it for some reason. (we all hate derry, richie thinks, remembering the day almost a decade ago when all seven of them sat in their underground clubhouse talking about where they wanted to go-- funnily enough they’d all ended up somewhere between bangor and the u of maine campus in orono, barely two hours from their dreaded hometown. even ben, who had made it all the way to texas during high school-- but then, richie understood exactly why he came back to new england, and he knew damn well he would’ve done the exact same thing)

He draws himself back to the matter at hand. Stan looks pale as a ghost, dark purple splotched underneath his eyes.

“It’s got you again, huh?” Richie asks grimly as he lets Stan into the apartment.

“I don’t know what to do,” Stan says helplessly. He folds onto the couch and pulls his knees to his chest.

“Why did you keep that shirt, man?” Richie asks. Slowly, he sits next to Stan, leaving a few inches between their bodies.

“What?” Stan asks blearily.

“Derry Tigers?”

“I don’t know. It’s soft.” 

“Huh.” (derry tried to eat us alive and apparently stan is more aware of that fact than any of us. why the fuck would he keep that tee shirt)

Richie takes another look at Stan, whose chin is leaned against his knees, whose patchily-stubbled face is unshaven. His hair is messy again. Richie can count the number of times he’s seen Stan with messy hair on his two hands. Two instances in a week-- now that’s something worth worrying over. He frowns.

The living room lights are off; the ambient light leftover from the kitchen around the corner and the bathroom down the hall are all that exist to illuminate the room. Being the proud owner of a pair of highly defective eyes that are somewhat photosensitive along with being half-blind, Richie has always preferred to keep rooms dim anytime he’s alone, unless he’s trying to read something. He writes his standup comedy ideas in the pages of a navy blue spiral notebook in near darkness. His handwriting isn’t neat in the best circumstances, so it doesn’t really matter. But now, with Stan hunched over on his couch, looking like he might fall into a mental breakdown at any second, Richie wonders if he should turn the lamp on.

“Rich,” Stan says after a few heavy, slinging moments of silence.

“Yeah, buddy?” 

Dread hangs itself across Stan’s soft brown eyes. He closes them for a moment. When he speaks, it comes quietly. “Do you… do you think it’s possible that we didn’t actually kill It?”

Richie blinks, his eyebrows pulling upward. Reflexively, he reaches for his glasses and nudges them up with a knuckle. “Stan, buddy, you’re just stressed out. You said it yourself. You have college, a job, and a whole-ass family to take care of. That’s all the nightmares are. Stress.”

Stan shakes his head.

(is he gonna throw up? oh god he looks like he actually might throw up. if i was looking like that i would definitely be puking)

“We killed It,” Richie goes on, trying to keep his voice steady. figuring Stan could use a reminder of that night’s events. “We weren’t afraid of It because we were all together. And I said, let’s kill this fucking clown. And we all took turns beating on it and then Eddie shot It with his inhaler and said something about battery acid. And It shriveled up into nothing and died. It’s gone forever.”

“We swore,” Stan says in a voice that sounds about six years old and about five hundred percent scared. “We did a blood oath. Remember?”

“Of course I remember, man. I still have a scar.” Richie looks to his palm, though it’s too dark to make out the near-decade-old mark. “But that was just because Bill wanted to. We killed It. I promise you that.”

“Do you really remember every detail of that summer?” Stan asks, sounding at least a little bit more like himself. He pushes his hair off his forehead. “Because I don’t, Richie. It was nine years ago. You don’t even remember exactly what Eddie said when he shot It with his inhaler. I don’t either. I don’t remember what it looked like to all of us. I don’t remember the details of us beating It up. And I’m sure there’s a lot more I forgot over the years. So how can we know for sure? Until it comes to the point where It was supposed to come back?”

This sends chills down Richie’s back. He suppresses a shiver. “Stanley--” he begins quietly.

“We’re going to be thirty-nine when It comes back,” Stan says, his voice trembling. All of a sudden Richie really wishes the damn lights were on. “My son is going to be a teenager. Patty and I will probably have more kids. I can’t go back there and fight that thing again.”

“It’s not going to come back, Stan.”

“You don’t know that,” Stan whimpers. “I’m sure people have tried to kill It in the past. Mike had all that research-- somebody must have tried something at some point. We couldn’t have been the first ones. If It does come back--”

“It won’t,” Richie says again, but the more he says it, the less sure he is. His pulse is beginning to shove into his forehead. It’s a Friday night and Bev is out with Ben at some college bar near campus-- for a moment, Richie wishes that she was home, that Ben and Mike and Bill and Eddie were all there with him too, that they could all convince Stan together.

“If It does come back,” Stan insists, “It’s going to come for us.”

(okay now i might throw up, fuck, i wish eddie was here, i’m going to have to go to bed alone tonight, he’s probably already asleep over in orono, fuck fuck fuck)

Richie shoves his hands under his thighs so they won’t shake; so Stan won’t see that Richie is beginning to feel a little tiny bit nervous about their childhood enemy now too. “It lived in Derry,” he says dumbly, grappling for _anything_ to say that might squash the idea.

“It was obsessed with us by the end of the summer.” Stan shoves himself further into the couch, rubbing at his mouth. He glances around the room as if the ghost of their childhood might be lurking in a dark corner. When he speaks again, his voice is even shakier and smaller and less certain. “It was hunting us just the same as we were hunting It. And It can probably come for us no matter where we are-- It can move supernaturally. How else was it in my dad’s office at the synagogue? Or in Beverly’s drain, or Bill’s basement? Or… where did you see It again?”

Richie feels himself go pale. Feels, for a moment, as if his heart has stopped all together. That the room is suddenly cold and pitch dark and empty, even though it’s still 72 degrees and dimly lit and housing a cat and a friend. Because nine years ago, sitting in the middle of Derry with his friends as they compared notes, Richie had lied.

“Um, I didn’t see It,” he lies again. “Not until we were all together in the house on Neibolt.”

“Richie… come on,” Stan says quietly.

“What?”

“Now that you mention it, I remember… I knew you were lying even then.”

(motherfucker i’m definitely going to throw up)

“What?” He says again, the word coming out weird.

“I just figured you didn’t want to talk about it because it was too scary,” Stan says. “What did It do to you?”

He swallows hard. Pulls his hands out from underneath his legs; they’re a little pins-and-needlesy from his weight. He shakes them out. “Uh, it was the Paul Bunyan statue,” he admits unevenly. “It came alive, and it was taunting me and chasing me and, um, it was right after Bowers and his friends called me a faggot and practically chased me out of the arcade and I was, you know, kind of crying and upset and stuff. I couldn’t… uh… tell you guys about that.”

“Right,” Stan says quietly. 

Richie shakes his head, unwilling to discuss the incident any further, unwilling to think about how disgusting it made him feel, how he’d cried again that night in his bedroom, how he’d tried to continue the lie even now, even after having quietly admitted to himself and his friends that he was, in fact, gay. “It’s dead, though, okay? We killed It. The end.”

(god i really fucking wish eddie were here so i didn’t have to sleep alone, maybe i’ll just stay up until it’s light, or maybe i’ll drive out of fucking bangor and bang on the door of his studio apartment and wake him up)

(haha i’ll drive out of _bangor_ and i’ll _bang on the door_, richie’s mind adds stupidly)

“I’m just not convinced,” Stan sighs. “And it’s not like we live that far away from where It would be if It woke up, anyway. I just… I can’t fucking sleep, Rich, it’s driving me crazy. I can’t stop thinking about It. I’m looking over my shoulder constantly.”

“Is this a recent thing?” Richie asks, figuring it must be since Stan has only been upset enough to show up to his apartment very recently. 

“It’s just a lot worse lately. I don’t know why.” Stan shakes his head, rubbing at his eyes. “It’s the last thing I need right now.”

“Maybe you should try talking to Patty about it,” Richie suggests, already certain Stan is going to shoot down the idea immediately--

“No way,” Stan says, confirming Richie’s mental prediction.

“Maybe she would understand.”

“Who could possibly understand other than the seven of us?”

“I mean, okay, she wouldn’t understand, but maybe she would be understand_ing_,” Richie amends.

“She wouldn’t even believe it,” Stan dismisses. “I wouldn’t believe it if I hadn’t lived through it.”

“But... she loves you and trusts you and stuff.”

“She loves me,” Stan agrees. “She absolutely loves me. No question about it. But if I told her that my friends and I once fought off a killer clown demon thing in the sewers underneath our hometown, she would probably have me committed to a mental asylum or something. And I wouldn’t blame her. Because it sounds completely insane.”

“Yeah, but if she started to tell you something that sounded kind of ridiculous, you’d at least hear her out, right?” Richie asks.

“Would you believe it for a second if you were in her place?” Stan counters.

Richie sighs, leaning his chin onto his hand. “Okay. Well. I mean, we don’t have to figure everything out right now, right? Let’s just watch something funny on TV until you feel better,” he suggests. 

“Alright,” Stan says weakly. Richie reaches for the remote.

+

Either the phone is ringing or Richie is having a really weird and boring dream about laying in bed while the phone rings.

He blinks into the darkness of his bedroom. It rings again, slightly muffled by his closed bedroom door, but not muffled enough.

(i must not have fallen asleep yet, he thinks)

He grabs for his glasses, hops out of bed, and all but sprints to the living room to get the phone. It’s going to go to voicemail soon, and he already kind of knows who’s on the other end of it.

He makes it in the middle of a ring. “Hello?”

“Rich, it’s Stanley,” a pleading, whimpering voice comes. “Sorry if I woke you up.”

“Nah, man, you didn’t, not at all,” Richie says. He looks at the little digital clock on the coffee table. 3:32 on Thursday morning. He watches it flip to 3:33. “Nightmares again?”

“No,” Stan says. “I couldn’t fall asleep. I’ve been laying in bed awake this whole time. Then I went to the living room and tried to read a book but I--” his quivering, uneven breathing cuts him off. “Fuck. I can’t fucking breathe. I don’t know what to do. I couldn’t focus on reading so I left.”

“Wait, you aren’t calling me from your house?” Richie asks, frowning. “Where are you, man?”

“I’m at that gas station between Eddington and Bangor,” Stan says, almost choking on the words.

(he’s at a fucking payphone? why would he stop at a payphone??????? oh what the fuck i really do not like this i really just hate this a whole lot)

“Take a deep breath,” Richie instructs. “I’m going to come over there, okay? Just go sit in your car and breathe.”

“I can’t-- I was trying to-- I didn’t want to hit anyone,” Stan whispers from the other end of the phone. “Or drive off the road or something. I was veering all over the place, it wasn’t safe, I kept thinking I was going to see It or the painting lady or something, I couldn’t…”

“Good thing you stopped then, buddy,” Richie says, frowning hard. 

He can hear Stan trying to suppress sobs. (wow i really hate this i really fucking hate this!!!!!!!! what do i do!!!!!!!!! his mind shouts at him as he listens, helpless, to his best friend having a panic attack or a mental breakdown or whatever the fuck this is)

(do i stay on the phone with him a little longer to get him to calm down or do i just go over there as fast as i can????????? fuck!!!)

“Stan,” he settles for saying, pushing his glasses up his nose; “hey, buddy, just try to breathe, okay?”

(eddie has a spare inhaler in my nightstand drawer should i take that or)

“Do you want Eddie’s inhaler?” Richie asks stupidly.

“What?”

“I have one of Eddie’s inhalers. I could bring it. Do you… I mean, it helps Eddie.”

“I don’t have asthma,” Stan manages.

“Neither does Eddie.”

“I… I don’t fucking know, Richie, I don’t know what to do,” he stammers. “I can’t breathe, I can’t stop shaking, I don’t know-- fuck.”

“Okay, okay,” Richie says quickly. “Um, how about if we hang up and you get in your car, and I’ll be there as fast as I can?”

“I feel like I’m dying,” Stan sobs.

“You’re not dying. Okay? You’re not dying. You’re going to be fine. I know you’re freaked out but-- I mean-- look, Stan, we killed It forever, okay? All six of us would tell you that. We did it. It’s gone.”

“You don’t have proof. You don’t have proof and if It’s still… if It’s hibernating and It wakes up when we’re forty It’s going to come after us and It’s going to hurt my family.” 

“It’s not going to hurt anyone, because we killed It,” Richie says again. Anxiety spikes through his chest. (i’m used to calming eddie down sure but stan???????????) He runs a hand through his unkempt dark hair. “Can you please just take a deep breath? You’ll feel better if you stop hyperventilating.” 

“It might have just tricked us into thinking we killed It.” His voice is shaky, wilted, almost painful to listen to.

“It didn’t,” Richie says, though the more he listens to Stan logic his way through this idea, the more doubt he begins to feel. Stan puts everything into neat little boxes; Stan goes through the world as if he’s solving an algebra problem, cancelling things out where he needs to, addressing what’s inside the parentheses before tackling anything else. He has a foolproof way of arguing his perspective. Richie has never been good at arguing, least of all when it comes to Stan’s airtight rationalizations. 

“The fact remains that none of us have any proof,” Stan says, his voice still wobbly, his words still punctured by uneasy attempts at breathing. “It’s not something we can look up. There’s no one to ask to make sure. There’s nothing we can do to check.”

(he’s trying to rationalize something that can’t be rationalized, richie thinks grimly; and he’s focusing on the uncertainty part of it because the other part-- the nightmares and thinking about the painting lady and the scary shit we went throughs-- is even less logical and it’s easier to just think, ‘what if we didn’t actually kill it’ than it is to think about how much it sucks that he’s having flashbacks and nightmares and whatever. it’s a shitty pyramid where everything is completely ridiculous and you can’t wrap your mind around any of it, some of it is just easier and more concrete to worry about than the other parts)

(or……….. something i don’t know)

“Stan,” Richie says. “You have like five hundred cute baby pictures in your wallet, right?”

“Yeah?”

“Just go sit in your car and look at them and try to just focus on how cute they are and I’ll be there in a few minutes and we’ll figure this out, buddy.”

“...Okay.”

Richie swallows hard. “Okay. I’ll see you in a minute.”

+

The two of them ended up sitting in Stan’s car for around an hour, during which Stan had apologized about a million times for dragging Richie out there in the middle of the night. But eventually, Richie managed to get him calm enough that he could drive home and try to sleep for the last few hours before he had to get up. 

(there’s no way he slept though, because like, i didn’t, and i’m not even the one having a whole-ass mental breakdown, richie thinks glumly as he makes it to his afternoon shift at blockbuster. throughout his shift he puts at least four movies back in the wrong places. his mind is just elsewhere.)

Around eight, he lets himself back into the apartment and promptly falls asleep on the couch, still in his navy blue polyester Blockbuster polo with its bright yellow collar. 

The next afternoon, he’s hiding weird cryptic sticky notes around Beverly’s bedroom when the doorbell rings.

(ben must just be early and he probably doesn’t know bev is still in class, he figures as he heads to the living room to answer it; no problem i can kick it with haystack for an hour or whatever, i’m bored anyway--)

But when he opens the door, it isn’t Ben standing on their welcome mat. It’s a short woman with dark curly hair and big eyes and a scattering of freckles across her nose. 

“Patty,” he says, taking a step back for no discernable reason. “Hey. What’s up?”

“Can I talk to you?” She asks, crossing her arms tight over her ribcage, her car keys jangling in her hand. “Is this an okay time? I would have called first but Stanley just keeps phone numbers in his head so he doesn’t have yours written down anywhere.”

“Yeah, sure, come on in,” Richie says. “Sorry it’s kinda messy. Uh, sit down, if you want?”

He’s never once been alone with his best friend’s wife. He doesn’t know how to act. He ends up mirroring her body language and crossing his arms too.

“Thanks.”

“Does Stan know you’re here?” Richie hazards.

She shakes her head, sitting down on the couch. “I told him I was going to a girlfriend’s house to study.”

(okay now the world’s best most loving most perfect hetero couple are…… lying to each other….. about coming to my apartment….. haha great, richie thinks)

“What’s going on, Patty?” He asks, feeling anxiety spike in his chest-- (shit i think she kind of reminds me of my mom, that’s super fuckin weird, don’t know what to do about that)

“You tell me,” she says, a crease forming between her perfectly-shaped eyebrows. She twists her wedding ring around her finger. “I know Stanley has been coming over here in the middle of the night. I’ve been hearing him get up and leave the bedroom. That’s not unusual. Sometimes he likes to check on Andy or get a glass of water or read for a while if he can’t sleep. But he’s been _leaving_ lately-- I mean I hear him go out the front door and drive off. The first couple times, I wasn’t going to say anything, but then the other night he wasn’t back until it was almost morning, so I asked him about it. He told me he came over here, but then he brushed me off. I know he’s not lying. I just don’t understand what’s wrong.”

(god i really do hate this, richie thinks as he listens to what patty has to say-- she seems really upset about the whole thing, she clearly knows it’s bad too)

“Yeah,” Richie says, sitting down on the other couch, realizing it’s kind of weird to tower over your guest as they talk to you. “He’s been coming here.”

“I know that,” Patty says, not impatiently. “Can you tell me why? He’s been so distant lately. I keep trying to talk to him about it but he won’t tell me anything. And he doesn’t smile much anymore.”

(ouch)

“It’s… really not my thing to tell,” Richie says slowly. There’s something about Patty that makes Richie feel like he needs to tell her the entire truth, but he fights it. Sifts through the situation to decide what all he should say. “He’s having a hard time. I mean, he’s having trouble sleeping and stuff. That’s why he keeps coming over here-- ‘cause I’m always awake in the middle of the night. We just hang out and watch TV and stuff.”

“He always has trouble sleeping,” Patty says. “Something else is bothering him.”

(he _always_ has trouble sleeping??????????? wow fuck)

Richie takes a breath. “Yeah,” he admits.

“And you know what it is.”

“Yeah,” he says again, avoiding her eyes. (okay just say part of it i guess???) “Um, it’s complicated. It doesn’t have anything to do with you or Andy or anything like that. It’s something from when we were kids. Something really… I mean…” he shuffles his words, running a hand through his hair. “We went through something really rough together-- during the summer when we were thirteen. Like, really bad. I didn’t realize until recently, but he’s still pretty broken up about it.”

He hazards a glance in her direction. She looks like she might cry. At some point, she’d covered her mouth with her hand-- she moves it to speak. “The two of you?” She asks.

“Our entire friend group,” Richie admits. “The seven of us. Uh, it all started with… I mean, Bill had a little brother, and the fall of seventh grade he went missing, so that next summer we were trying to figure out what happened to him because the police wouldn’t do anything and it was driving Bill crazy. It sort of turned into this whole thing. We ended up in a really dangerous nasty situation and… I think you should hear the rest from him, but like, it was bad, and for some reason it’s all coming back to Stan now.”

“Is that why he hates your hometown so much?”

“Yeah. Derry is fucked. Sorry, ‘scuse my language. But like that’s the best word for it.” He squirms a little, uncomfortable with the seriousness of this conversation, uncomfortable with how much he’s told her-- especially considering he’s never told anyone outside his friend group about it, and it isn’t like the seven of them really ever discuss it either. Some things are better left buried in the earth of your hometown.

“Did you guys have some kind of... close encounter with the person who kidnapped Bill’s little brother?” She asks.

(i mean yeah i guess you could say that)

He’s still mulling over how exactly to respond when two knocks hit his door.

“Hold that thought,” he says, hopping up, grateful for the excuse-- “I think that must be Ben, he was going to come over, he probably doesn’t realize Bev isn’t home yet--”

But when he swings the door open, once again, it isn’t the tall, tanned frame of Beverly’s kind-of-boyfriend-just-no-labels. It’s the medium frame of Stan, dark splotches underneath his eyes, a six-month-old baby with downy caramel hair and big brown eyes in his right arm.

(am i in a damn episode of friends right now)

“Stan the man,” his mouth says. His hands do finger guns. He didn’t mean to do either of these things.

“Hey,” Stan says. “I swear I’m not sobbing or hyperventilating right now. I just feel weird being in that house without Patty lately. I don’t know. Can Andy and I hang out for a little while?”

“Here’s the thing,” Richie starts to say, but Patty is already coming up next to him;

“Stanley?”

“Patty?”

“Andy?” Richie adds in fake astonishment before he can stop himself. Stan and Patty both ignore his dumb joke. “Sorry. Hi. Yeah. Come on in. I’m just hanging out with your wife, no big deal.” He holds the door open wider and steps aside. Stan shifts the baby to his other arm as he steps over the threshold. 

Richie shuts the door, his pulse shoving a little, unsure of how to boil the potatoes of this situation.

“What are you doing here?” Stan asks once they’re all standing in a weird little circle in the unswept entryway of Richie’s apartment. Andy reaches a chubby hand toward his mother, making little baby gargling noises.

“I came here to ask Richie what’s going on,” she says, taking a step closer and letting the baby grab onto her finger. “Since you wouldn’t tell me and I didn’t want to keep nagging you.”

“Oh,” Stan says, blinking a few times. He glances toward Richie, his eyes asking a silent question-- _what did you tell her?_ Richie shakes his head in response, trying to silently answer that he didn’t really tell her anything.

“He told me something traumatic happened when you were kids,” Patty says. “Will you please tell me what it is, Stan? I’m worried about you.”

“You don’t need to worry about me, sweetheart,” he says, shaking his head. “I’m fine.”

“You clearly aren’t fine, and I _am_ worried,” she insists. “Can we please talk about it?”

Again, Stan glances to Richie. This time, Richie nods several times, his eyebrows nudging upward, trying to silently tell Stan _yes, come on, we need to do this, let’s just do this_.

(you don’t have to do this alone stan!!!!!! i’ll say the parts you don’t want to!! he mentally adds to his silent message)

Apparently, it works. Stan sighs. He glances down at the baby in his arms and then nods his head once. “Alright. Yeah. I’m sorry, Patty. Richie and I will tell you everything.”

“Let’s sit down,” Richie adds, touching Stan’s shoulder for a fraction of a second. “This might take a while.”

**Author's Note:**

> thank you so much for reading and thanks to my pal mo for beta-ing!!!! please leave a comment :)
> 
> follow me on tumblr at pramcine.tumblr.com!


End file.
